EMC partners with Oracle to sell DatabaseXtender suite

Computerworld - EMC Corp. announced today that its first service provider partnership with Oracle Corp. to sell and install EMC's DatabaseXtender suite of products, which analyze databases and then migrate older or inactive records off expensive primary storage and onto online secondary disk systems.
The DatabaseXtender suite, which arose in part from EMC's acquisition of Legato Systems Inc. last year, includes DatabaseXtender Accelerator and DatabaseXtender Analyzer. The Analyzer looks at what applications are consuming a database, and DatabaseXtender prunes data, reducing the rate of database use.
The DatabaseXtender announcement follows EMC's decision last year to release a service offering around its product and services around Oracle. Steve Kennison, an analyst at Enterprise Storage Group, said the service agreement with Oracle "is an augmentation to that."
"DataBaseXtender allows for better migration and movement of data to proper storage classes via policies," Kennison said. "This service really helps the IT professional, after EMC leaves, continue to be successful in managing storage underneath a database."
Both EMC and Oracle can deliver service or consulting for the products being released, including in-depth assessments and analysis of a customer's data to determine which records should be archived, said Clint Vaughn, director of technology and strategy at EMC.
"Oracle has certain rules and procedures in place that people are maniacal about not breaking. This technology agreement enables that," he said.
Part of the DatabaseXtender software resides in the database, and part resides in the business application. For example, DataXtender Analyzer might look at an Oracle database with an accounts receivable, human resources and inventory application and determine the amount of storage those business applications take up.
DataXtender could then project the growth of each business module. If, for example, the software determined that the accounts receivable application was growing at 60%, DatabaseXtender Accelerator would then proactively taper that particular business module's growth down to 25% by trimming older data.
EMC DatabaseXtender Accelerator for Oracle E-Business Suite is expected to be available in North America on Feb. 17 and worldwide later this year.
The software would cost on average about $40,000.
EMC also announced joint services with Oracle focused on tiered storage infrastructure as well as the creation of a joint service center staffed by engineers from both companies to speed up problem resolution for their 25,000 shared customers.
The new services include information life-cycle management (ILM) workshops to help customers understand the basics of an infrastructure that offers policy-based, automated management of data from creation to deletion. Each workshop is designed to be completed in four to sixweeks and yield an ILM road map.
The services also include recoverability assessment to identify risks and exposures to mission-critical applications; an operations assessment to identify storage management policy, process and organizational gaps and define a plan for improvements; and an infrastructure assessment to identify areas for cost savings via consolidation and a tiered architecture.